New Haven’s Mayor Harp wants community involved in finding new police chief

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NEW HAVEN >> The police union wants someone from the inside the department to replace ex-Police Chief Dean Esserman because they said not doing so would be unfair to the other ranking officers who may look at the position as an incentive to stay in the agency.

“The goal in any job is to move up, to get to the top, so if you keep getting someone from the outside, then why should anyone here stay?” said New Haven Police Union President Craig Miller. “We have great supervisors that can fill that position; don’t give us false hope, we want the chance to move up.”

Harp said Assistant Police Chief Anthony Campbell will continue to run the department as interim chief “for a while” until the administration figures things out.

Mayoral spokesman Laurence Grotheer said Harp has not yet finalized plans regarding the search for a new police chief, except to say she is eager for the process, when it gets underway, to include input from a broad range of community members.

“For the near future, it is Mayor Harp’s priority for the New Haven Police Department to combine the positive trend in the city of steadily declining crime rates with stability and continuity among police department command,” Grotheer said.

On her WNNH Radio “Mayor Monday” talk show this week, Harp said she would talk to Chief Administrative Officer Mike Carter, Chief of Staff Tomas Reyes, Alder Tyisha Walker, and others in the community to see whether or not they would like to do a national search for a new chief.

“What I know is that we are ahead of the nation in policing,” Harp said on the show. “I would not want to bring a police officer in here who doesn’t understand the way in which we police, how important the community-police relationship is, and so that is something that I’m going to be looking at very carefully and considering as we move forward.”

Grotheer said a meeting had not been officially scheduled between Carter, Reyes, and Walker to discuss the process.

Miller said he had hoped the administration would already have figured out its next move toward hiring a permanent chief.

“I was hoping when all this was going on with the chief’s resignation there was also some plan in place to replacing him a timely manner and it doesn’t seem to be that way,” Miller said. “I just hope this isn’t prolonged.”

Miller said getting someone from the outside has not always been successful and he fears that may be the case if the city conducts another outside search.

Esserman was brought in from Rhode Island by Mayor John DeStefano Jr. five years ago. The union held a no-confidence vote against Esserman in July, the weekend before he was placed on administrative leave for berating waitstaff at a local restaurant. In 2011, city police officers voted that they had no confidence in then-Police Chief Frank Limon, who came to New Haven from Chicago, and two assistant chiefs at the time. Before that, then-Chief James Lewis, originally from Wisconsin, arrived from in New Haven in July 2008. He came in to clean up the department after a federal corruption investigation and left after 20 months on the job when his contract expired.

“It’s no different than before,” Miller said. “You can always look at a person and say they can be a good fit for the department but there are some chiefs that were brought in before from the outside and they weren’t a perfect fit.”

The last person from inside the department to be appointed as chief was Francisco Ortiz Jr. in June 2003. According to the city’s website, Ortiz served the New Haven Police Department for nearly 30 years, progressively moving up each rank from patrol officer to chief. He left in 2007 for a job at Yale University. His departure came at the heels of a narcotics scandal, which DeStefano and Ortiz said at the time had nothing to do with his departure.

Harp’s authority to appoint a new chief is subject to approval of the Board of Alders. She said there are some constraints in the city charter, which says a police chief has to have a bachelor’s degree and five years’ experience supervising a police force with at least 200 members.

Grotheer said giving Campbell the title of “interim” chief instead of “acting” chief gives him a bit more freedom in his role as top cop. Grotheer said the role of acting chief would be limited by the city charter but he did not give specific limitations.

“Interim can be construed as indefinite,” Grotheer said.

Miller said the union has yet to meet with Harp or Campbell about his interim position and said he would not comment on the matter until he figures out what’s going to happen.

Last week, New Haven officials refused to release details of severance agreement with Esserman because, Grotheer said, it is a personnel issue and as a negotiated settlement, there is the “potential for litigation” around the deal.

Any no-bid contract over $100,000 needs to be approved by the Board of Alders, according to the city’s purchasing rules.

But when asked about the details of Esserman’s departure on the talk show Monday, Harp said “the board of alderman doesn’t have to approve the overall resignation program that we set up for chief Esserman” because “it’s not a whole lot of money.”

Harp was criticized by community members for not firing Esserman while he was on paid leave. Harp continued to defend Esserman’s contributions to the department, citing the decline in crime during his tenure and his push for community policing.

“We have made progress when almost every other urban area in America has seen more death and destruction on the streets through gun violence. He absolutely did that,” Harp said.

She said Esserman came in to create change and now someone else needs to maintain that change. Miller believes a new leader can be found inside the department.

“Esserman came and did his duty and reached the point where there was nothing further to change but now its time for others within the department to advance in rank and continue to promote their own ideas and move this department forward,” Miller said.

As an assistant chief, Campbell is responsible for the Administrative Bureau, a role he continues to hold in addition to being chief. He is an 18-year member of the force and began his career in the patrol division. In 2001 he was assigned to the New Haven Police Training Academy where he served as a training instructor until 2008.

Campbell was promoted to sergeant in 2009 and was assigned as the detail room supervisor in 2010 until 2012 when he was assigned to the New Haven Police Training Academy as the executive officer. In 2013, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and assigned as the officer in charge of Internal Affairs, and then served as the chief of staff until his promotion to assistant chief.

“I’m confident that chief Campbell will be an excellent interim chief and will continue the progress that we’ve made,” Harp said.